Press Releases

Shu will receive honorary degree, along with writer-activist Rebecca Solnit

and the directors and producer of the
Japanese film animation house Studio
Ghibli

PROVIDENCE,
RI – On Saturday, June 2 at 1:30PM, 197 graduate and 448 undergraduate students
from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) will receive their diplomas during
RISD’s 2012 Commencement celebration. For the second year in recent history,
the ceremony will take place at the Rhode Island Convention Center in downtown
Providence, adjacent to the space that houses the annual RISD Graduate Thesis
Exhibition.

Commencement
is a vibrant celebration that culminates the RISD experience. Graduates
typically transform their caps and gowns in idiosyncratic ways – by painting,
reimagining and embellishing them to make a more personal artistic statement or
simply to have fun with this colorful RISD tradition.

At the
ceremony, RISD will present honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees on to several
special guests at its 2012 Commencement ceremony. The honorary degree
recipients who are being recognized for creating groundbreaking work and making
a profound impact on contemporary culture are: architect and professor Wang
Shu, who will also deliver the keynote address; writer-activist Rebecca Solnit; and the directors and
producer of the Japanese film animation house Studio Ghibli – Hayao
Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki, respectively, with
Suzuki accepting the award on behalf of the studio.

This year the RISD Alumni Association recognizes Nicholas Felton 99 GD, the influential designer who sparked new interest in the field of information graphics and made the Timeline redesign of Facebook’s profile page a success. Felton
will receive the Association’s Business of Design Award, given to an
alumni entrepreneur for excellence in the visual arts and
leadership/achievement in business.

Graduating students will mount a series of exhibitions
leading up to Commencement, including the Senior
Invitational Exhibition at Woods-Gerry Gallery, the RISD Annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition at the RI Convention
Center, a selection of graduate student works at Sol Koffler Gallery, a
student-curated exhibition at Gelman Gallery in the Chace Center, and the
Senior Film/Animation/Video Festival at the RISD Auditorium. Details about each
can be found in the Exhibitions
area of the website.

Wang Shu | As one of China’s leading
architects, Wang Shu is deeply
concerned about modern architecture that is alienated from nature and cultural
history. In response to China’s rapid urbanization, he advocates an
architecture in which the landscape and the built environment seamlessly merge.

Just this week news broke that Wang is the recipient of
the 2012 Pritzker
Architecture Prize, which is widely considered the highest honor in the
field. A formal ceremony will take place in Beijing on May 25 to present him
with the $100,000 grant that accompanies the prize.

“The recent process of
urbanization in China invites debate as to whether architecture should be
anchored in tradition or should look only toward the future,” notes The Lord
Palumbo, jury chairman for the Pritzker Prize. “As with any great architecture,
Wang Shu’s work is able to transcend that debate, producing an architecture
that is timeless, deeply rooted in its context and yet universal.”

In 1997 Wang and his wife Lu WenYu founded the Amateur Architecture
Studio, a practice known for using vernacular, traditional and recycled
materials alongside experimental building techniques. The team designs projects
that suit their context, and takes inspiration from objects of cultural
importance, such as the ink stone from the Song Dynasty (960–1279) that
inspired the award-winning Ceramic House in Jinhua City. Other noted
projects include the Vertical Courtyard Apartment in Hangzhou, the Ningbo
Contemporary Art Museum and the Five Scattered Houses in Ningbo.

In 2011 Wang and Lu were recognized with the gold prize from L’Académie d’Architecture de France and in
2010 they won the Schelling Architecture Prize. Wang is head of the
Architecture School at the China Academy of Art and has
lectured and taught at universities all over the world, including serving as
the Kenzo Tange Visiting Professor at Harvard School of Design last fall.

Rebecca Solnit | The author of 13
books, historian and activist Rebecca
Solnit writes about art, politics, community, landscapes, ecology, memory
and the environment, among other interests. Her work
traces thematic junctions in art and cultural history, showing how
people work to maintain a sense of connection to place and each other in an
often anonymous, fragmented and fast-paced modern world.

Solnit’s latest book, Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
(2010), visually charts the diverse cultural geography and history of San
Francisco through 22 complex maps. Among her other better known works are: A Paradise Built in Hell: The
Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster(2010), A Field Guide to Getting Lost(2006),Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild
Possibilities(2005)andWanderlust: A History of Walking(2001).

Solnit won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her
book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the
Technological Wild West (2004). She has also earned a Guggenheim
Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award, is a contributing editor at Harper’s
Magazine and writes for the political site TomDispatch.com.

Studio Ghibli | Studio Ghibli, which derives its name from the
Arabic word for a strong North African wind, was established in 1985 by
director and animator Hayao Miyazaki,
his colleague and mentor, director Isao
Takahata, and producer Toshio Suzuki
to “blow a new wind through the Japanese anime industry”
and push the
boundaries of traditional animation. Since then the studio’s phenomenal work
has focused on pacifism, feminism and the relationship between humans, nature
and technology, while also offering an incisive critique of capitalism and
globalism.

Studio Ghibli is perhaps best known in the US for the
Oscar-winning film Spirited Away (2001). Its latest
release, The Secret World of Arrietty (2011), just opened in February
and is now showing in theaters across the country. Ghibli’s diverse portfolio
of films, including My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Grave
of the Fireflies (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), PrincessMononoke (1997) and My Neighbors the Yamadas(1999), have contributed to the
studio’s reputation for exacting detail and for allowing its drawings to really
drive each story.

Disney and Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter has
acknowledged Studio Ghibli as one of the greatest animation teams of all time.
The studio has also been lauded for the humanity, spirituality and integrity of
its films, and for refusing to allow American distributors to edit their
signature nonlinear structure.

Studio Ghibli’s work has a huge following both in Japan
and worldwide. Their films inspire ongoing academic research and have been
shown at Carnegie Hall and in the Los Angeles American Cinematheque
retrospective series. The Ghibli
Museum, Mitaka in Tokyo is dedicated to the studio’s history and hand-drawn
animation styles.

About Rhode Island
School of Design

Rhode Island School of
Design (RISD) has earned an international reputation as the leading college
of art and design in the United States. Approximately 2,400 students from
around the world study at RISD, pursuing full-time bachelor’s or master’s
degree programs in a choice of 19 studio majors. RISD
is known for its phenomenal faculty of artists and designers, the breadth of
its specialized facilities and its hands-on, studio-based approach to learning
– one in which critical thinking informs making works by hand. Required courses
in the liberal arts provide an essential complement to studio work, enabling
graduates to become critical and informed individuals eager to engage with the
world. Through the accomplishments of its 26,000 alumni, the college champions
the vital role artists and designers play in satisfying the global demand for
innovation. Founded in 1877, RISD (pronounced “RIZ-dee”) and the RISD Museum of Art help make Providence, RI among
the most culturally active and creative cities in the region. For more
information, visit www.risd.edu or
our.risd.edu